IOSH EDINBURGH BRANCH

Minutes of 186 Edinburgh Branch Meeting

Craighouse Campus, Napier University, Edinburgh – Thursday 8 November 2007 - 130pm

Sederunt:         V Stewart          M Grimmer        C Wilmott          L Young            M Johnstone      M King

D McCluskie      M Downer          A McLeod         B Gippert          A Milne             J Reid               M Powell

M Powell           G O’Neill           A D Sharman     A Green            K Drum             R Thomson        S Rougit

D Fitzsimons     K Lloyd             S Scott             M Dunne           A Sturthers        R McLean         S Daly

M Bancroft        I Sinclair            T Williams         R Walker           B Howden         M Galloway       S Keddie

C McGregor       D Richardson     A McNeil           A James           S Wilson           A Bell               L Roberts

A Dick              E Sneddon        R Innes             C Pendler

Apologies:  Ann Diment, Andrew Reid, Freddie Johnston, Jim Hepburn, Jake Fenton,  Ronnie Weir, Derek Cawkwell, Tom Neilson, Richard Lovering, Kevin O’Donnell, Graeme Lyall, Brian Sweeney, Lilian McCartney,  Graeme Lyall, Ruth Turner, Ron Hunter, Gerry O’Neill

1          Chair:  Andrew Sharman took the Chair.

2.         Minutes of previous meeting: October 2007

•      Receipt – anyone not in receipt please email Secretary.

•      Accuracy:   Proposer – Stuart Keddie; Seconder – Les Roberts.

•      Matters arising - none.

3          Correspondence:

The Grange: Membership

Affiliate 93;  Chartered Fellow 21; Chartered Member 286; Fellow 3; Graduate 45; Life member 4;

Member 90; Technician Member 298.   Total 840  (5 still unpaid)

Specialist Groups

Aviation 2;                     Comms/Media 6;           Construction 244;           Consultancy 62;

Education 47;                Environment  117;          Fire RM   43;                 Food/Drink/Hosp 4;

Offshore 47;                   Hazardous Ind 10;          Healthcare 51;               International 22;                

Public Services 117;       Railway 16;                   Retail/Dist   9;               Rural 12;

Safety Sciences 20

Job Spot:

·        Safety and Risk Management consultants: Risktec: Houston & international

·         Sturrock Power: HS&E Manager: Construction/FM Industries preferably within the M&E Sector.

·         Safety Adviser: Edinburgh area: Strathmore Services Ltd: Contract/assignment work

EVENTS

•      15 November: 7th Scottish Hazards Conference: The Big Debate: the way forward for health and safety in Scotland.

•      29 November 2007: McCLURE NAISMITH: FREE SEMINAR - FIRE INVESTIGATIONS: Stuart Mortimore of Burgoynes followed by Rachel Robertson, one of McClure Naismith's insurance lawyers who will talk on a related legal theme. 

4.         Group Reports

Forth and Tay District:  their last meeting had had a talk on Fire Safety – it was well presented with lots of useful information and lots of discussion following.

Public Services: Marion reported that the booklet for elected members (of local authorities) was now with the Communications section at IOSH prior to going to the HSE/LA Forum prior to launch.

5.         Members Items

•      Will need new Branch Secretary from May 08 (Max retires).  Anyone interested tell Max.

·         RMCT: Successful day held by the 12 participants in the freezing rain!   Won by Douglas McLeod (son of Ali).  Thanks to Billy Johnstone for organising this.

·         Thinking about Health and Safety: Booklet for MSPs.  Andrew reported this had been launched at the Scottish Parliament in the evening of 31^st October.  The booklet had been well received.  Thanks particularly to Jake Fenton, Bob Bertram and others involved in its preparation. At the same time,  the outcomes of a piece of IOSH funded research carried out by Glasgow Caledonian University had been presented.  This looked into the outcomes of having advice available from a competent H&S practitioner and had revealed quantifiable positive benefits.  This also tied in with the launch of the IOSH booklet “Get the Best”.

·         Dr Terry Williams, HSE Office Glasgow:  he wanted to bring to members’ attention a recent HSE/HSC strategy booklet looking to the year 2010 and beyond.  This recognized that the HSE would not be able to drive H&S improvements forward on their own – on of their key roles would be to ensure that partnerships were working.  Currently the HSE Office in Scotland was looking at this especially in a Scottish context.  The HSE saw a partnership with a body such as IOSH as bringing real benefits to health and safety – the HSE intended a real partnership – equality rather than looking down.

•      10 minute talk: Margaret King of the Edinburgh (St Andrews) Speakers Club outlined the benefits to be gained by joining and participating in the regular meetings of a Speakers Club – it seemed the two things most people feared were death and public speaking!  Speakers clubs build up your skills in this important (professional) area with post talk evaluation – including a strict attention to timing.  Impromptu speaking on an unknown topic also honed one’s skills.  Details of the different clubs in East Scotland could be found via http://www.the-asc.org.uk

6. Guest Speaker:

Asbestos management in practice  Liz Sneddon, OHSAS

Liz was introduced by Branch Vice-chair, Liz Young, although she really needed no introduction having spoken to the bRanch previously on the issue of asbestos.

Liz started off by saying she had changed roles and was now very involved with assisting a major client which had been subject to re-organisation to managing asbestos as required by Regulation 4 – Control of Asbestos in non-domestic premises.  Despite a different perspective the issues were the same – at the end of the day the following isssues had to be addressed:

Duties of owners, occupiers, managing agents & others

•          Rest with person in control of maintenance activities

•          Determined by degree of responsibility in respect of the building and maintenance activities

•          Shared responsibilities between owner & occupier

This could be shown with respect to a complex organisation as involving:

She would speak on each of the issues as shown in the following diagram:

Asbestos Policy:  It wasn’t enough to point people to the HSE documents and have simple statement like We do not knowingly work with asbestos”.  The policy needed to cover clearly the responsibilities of everyone.

Survey and Data Handling:   This did not have to be on paper – electronic versions were also acceptable but then databases needed checking to make sure calculations were done properly.  You had to consider ease of input and ease of keeping up to date.  Given the effort put into setting up the register it was worthwhile using it as a materials register eg fibreglass as well as asbestos. 

Remedial action: The issue here was striking the balance between removal or leaving and controlling – and if the latter whether labelling was necessary or not.  The problems associated with asbestos were well known and it was not unknown for schoolchildren to break up asbestos (which had been labelled) to cause closure of the school with consequent time off!

Control of work:  Generally problems did not arise with one’s staff who you could ensure had been given the asbestos awareness training and could be trusted to report unknown materials and adopt a cautious approach.  However, the main difficulties arose with contractors brought in by budget holders who would not necessarily ensure that the information was passed o and especially to the ocntractor’s front line staff.  This could happen even when serious efforts had been made to instruct the contractor and his staff. 

Information, instruction and Training:  this had to tailored and relevant to the audience – it was no use presenting a course going into each of the 35 regulations for the staff working on the ground – it had to be orientated to their needs.

Usage/Plans:   as well  as considering buildings in use and the “normal” interference tha could occur, what could happen to closed buildings should not be forgotten – if inadequately secured then vandals could target them.  You could also get the capital projects team undertaking work in the same or adjacent area as the maintenance team without each other’s knowledge.

Re-inspection:  as well as checking on the state of the material, it was useful to note if departments had changed – a department in a new location would not necessarily know about the asbestos in their area. The annual inspection was a bit like an MOT – for istance if there was evidence of new damage it was necessary to ask why it had happened.

Actions: following on there would be some action plan – ranging from the simple decision to label (or re-label) certain areas to removal.

Audit/Review:  this would usefully cover the policy to reflect the changing needs of the organisation and looking at it in the cold light of day.

Your role:  you were an outside influence – in some cases performing the very valuable task of getting a client’s different departments to go forward together on this topic.

7.         Closing details

Date of next meeting:

•      Edinburgh Branch: 13 Dec: Secure by Design - Buildings (a case study) Julie Slorach, Director, Camerons Ltd